Petrol Station
“An extraordinary new play that arrives at our nation’s capitol with such uncanny timing it will make your head spin. The work is feverishly in-tune with both the unhinged state of our political life and the chaos that rages throughout much of the Middle East.”
About.
The Petrol Station, Premiered March 24th, 2017
Running time, 95 minutes
Performed in English
Co-producers: The Eisenhower Theater at
the Kennedy Center; ArtsEmerson, Boston; NYU Gallatin School of Individualised Study
Written & Directed by Sulayman Al Bassam;
Design & Lighting by by Eric Soyer;
Original Score by Sam Shalabi
Drawing inspiration from Sumerian myth, Palestinian refugee literature and Americana iconography around the Gas Station; Petrol Station portrays a modern dystopia of wild, open spaces, where defunct ideologies, desperate migrants and opportunistic traffickers vie for supremacy and the unattainable body of a woman.
This production marks the first time that Al Bassam worked with a cast of actors who all identify as American: an experiment in allegory, further exploring questions of trans-cultural appropriation and identity politics.
Director’s Note
This is a trans-border play in which the parameters of geography, religion, and civilizational memory are perpetually shifting. The journeys of the protagonists emphasize the arc of the transgressive momentum in the piece. By making the choice to explore the text with a superb team of American actors, the process invites and heightens these limitrophe probings of territorial identities, a theme that strikes me as being central to this moment of accelerated globalization. This is also a play that comes to life during the first hundred days of the U. S. Presidential mandate of Donald Trump. The timing of the creation of this piece is a poignant reminder that the ‘back yard’ (aka the Arab World) where US Foreign Policy is used to dumping tyrants, is also an entry point into any home.
